How many of your were teenagers in the late 80″s or early 90’s? How many readers out there remember when Guns and Roses released Appetite for Destruction? How does this relate to technology and why the heck am I taking this trip down memory lane? Well remember the feeling that you got as a kid when you listened to a album/tape/CD that was sooooo good that it made you want to dance around your room for hours and play the music over and over again. Well that type of euphoric teenage excitement is how I feel when I am able to combine many apps into one project for my students or a presentation for the general public at large. I have been told that my “teen-age like” enthusiasm for technology is contagious to those around me (i.e. my high school students and the various folks I present to). This week I had an opportunity to synthesize student worked created in multiple apps that was such a great recipe that I am calling it APPlabet soup.
Setting: As part of special education week, the program that I teach in won a NJSBA Innovations in Education Award for our use of iPad technology. Governor Christie was supposed to come but I guess he was busy with Prince Harry. For our presentation we had multiple APPS running on various iPads at the same time. The first iPad had a stop-animation movie that my students had made about the effects of Hurricane Sandy in My Create, the second iPad played an iMovie Trailer that my students had made about Newton’s Laws for my physics class, the third iPad had an iMovie that my chemistry students had made about the difference between an acid and a base, the fourth iPad showed a Screencast that I had created for my Algebra II students in Educreations, and finally the fifth iPad was used by spectators as we got the them to actively participate by scanning the QR codes and visuals with ATT Scanner.
Delicious Recipe: APPlabet soup had all the perfect ingredients. I loved the way that many of the younger students from other schools came over to the iPads and pressed the start buttons because they wanted to see the movies over and over again. It was nice for my students because it was the culmination of all of the hard work that they do in my classroom every day. I loved watching them steal the show… I loved that our presentation table was always noisy… I love that the event coordinator told me we had redefined what a presentation at NJSBA looked like… to me that is further proof that teaching with technology continues to push limits redefine thes sights and sounds of educational settings and physical spaces in and beyond the classroom. It was a good day to be a “pusher/peddler” of APPlabet soup!!
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